Special Thanks to DeSmog's Steve Horn for 6.5 Years of Courageous Journalism

The entire DeSmog team wishes to thank Steve Horn for his incredible effort and commitment, and wish him the best as he embarks on a new career path covering criminal justice issues for Criminal Legal News and Prison Legal News.

Steve joined DeSmog in August 2011 as our first Research Fellow, and covered just about every beat for us, from fracking to coal ash, fossil fuel subsidies and lobbying scandals, ALEC, SPN, and even the obscure IOGCC.

To say that Steve was prolific would be an understatement. He wrote 480 articles during his 6.5 years working for DeSmog, or an average of about 73-74 articles per year.

Here are our Top 15 hits from Steve, although the truth is that every piece he wrote was a hit, so dive further into his archive of articles if possible. And follow him on Twitter if you don't already.

Thank you, Steve!

Steve Horn’s Top 15 Highlights as a DeSmog Research Fellow

1.) An 11-Part Series on IOGCC, an obscure group that Steve doggedly investigated — even to the point that they called the police on him!

4.) 2015 piece on role played by Hillary Clinton's State Department to push energy sector privatization reform in Mexico and general reporting on the issue ever since. That story was covered as front page news by one of Mexico's biggest newspapers, La Jornada.

5.) Dozens of pieces about Keystone XL, including many about ERM Group and other State Department conflicts-of-interest in the Obama era and on President Donald Trump's “Made in America” executive order for steel and pipelines like Keystone. It turns out that much of the steel for U.S. pipelines is made by a Russian-owned company, including for Keystone and DAPL.

That reporting was subsequently picked up in coverage by MSNBC's Joy Reid on her show “AM Joy” and discussed by 350.org's Bill McKibben on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO.

14.) The first big coverage of the oil-by-rail issue in the U.S., including what BNSF might have known — citing a document from the state of Missouri which was picked up by “Democracy Now!” — about the volatility of the substance it was carrying via rail. Also the first big piece on how Warren Buffett and BNSF could benefit from tar sands by rail as a KXL alternative.

15.) Well over a dozen pieces about ALEC over the years, including the definitive historical piece about the historical roots of the group State Policy Network, which was an offshoot of ALEC started out of the office of the Heartland Institute. Recent reporting has shown, almost exclusively in the media ecosystem, how ALEC and corporate interests which fund it and drives its agenda, are pushing to criminalize protests of pipelines in the post-DAPL era in states such as Wyoming and Iowa. Also revealed that ALEC's former top energy and environmental staffer, Todd Wynn, now works at the Trump Interior Department.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE